Strappado (Noun)
Meaning
A form of torture in which the hands are tied behind a person's back and they are lifted off the ground by a rope tied to their wrists, then allowed to drop until their fall is checked with a jerk by the rope.
Classification
Nouns denoting acts or actions.
Examples
- The accused was subjected to the strappado, a gruesome form of torture employed by the inquisitors during the trials of suspected heretics.
- At the height of the Spanish Inquisition, the strappado was commonly used as a means of extracting confessions from those deemed enemies of the state.
- Torture methods like the strappado allowed interrogators to elicit information from even the most hardened prisoners.
- Many condemned prisoners fell victim to the agonizing pain of the strappado during the early Renaissance period in Europe.
- Historians have documented numerous accounts of inquisitors employing the strappado in an effort to coerce false confessions from those under investigation.